Let's see this Treasury Department list again... Aiman Al-Zawahiri....Radovan Karadzic....Alexander Lukashenko.... ah, Tour & Marketing International.
Steven Marshall, the owner of T&M and affiliated websites such as www.cuba-hemingway.com, www.cuba-oldhavana.com, and www.cubanculture.com, is a British travel agent with an …

Won't be around much longer

US Government Censorship

the US government censors things? oh no, someone get this surprising news up on to wikileaks so we can expose them!

all i can say is that we are a monarchy, a form of dictatorship and we are more democratic with more of a right to free speech than them... (at least for now, however the US black helicopters seem to be getting permission to operate too freely here lately)

@ Andy Barber -READ the article

The registrar was American, not the host. Still a bad move in hindsight, but not an insanely stupid one, like hosting in the USA. Also, .com is NOT American, .co.us is. Just because the Yanks have hijacked .com and .gov doesn't make it right (or even legal).

Enom is part of the problem

As a Web hosting provider, I'd had cause to deal with Enom, and I can say that in my experience, the only registrar that is less customer-friendly is Internet (aka Verisign).

Oh, and @ Not That Andrew: To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as the .co.us domain. The .us TLD is non-commercial; we serfs slaving for God's Personal Representative (aka GW "screw the Constitution" Bush) who want to do commerce on the Internet are expected to use the .com TLD.

Had anyone asked (bloody unlikely, that), I'd have advised the travel agent in question to have his domains hosted as .co.uk domains, and put nothing but redirects in the .com TLD. That keeps the *real* sites safe from overzealous neoNazis, and anyone bookmarking the page would go directly back to it on future visits, never even realizing that the .com had been stolen.

@ not andrew

Ideological midgets!

Just another example of why you can't trust the Yanks not to behave like unreasonable bullies when it comes to the rights of foreigners. Here's someone who is abiding by the law in the country he lives in, has no connection at all except a domain registry and he gets his business and his livelihood threatened by these ideological midgets.

Only proves...

That you can't trust the Americans. Ever. For anything.

Moral is: don't use .com website names, since the Americans seem to have hijacked them for their own purposes. It was supposed to be international, but then again the Americans are supposed to have "freedom of expression" as well. Too bad they're so mired in their self-important censorship to notice.

Bunch of tossers, their whole government and the minority who voted for them.

@Not That Andrew

As a point of fact, you can't hijack something you own. Like it or not, the US gov't paid for the establishment of the domain name system as well as the IP address system.

The problem is not that the US owns ".com" (and is nice enough to let any old Johnny Foreigner to use it, too), but that the non-US agents came up with cumbersome and ugly national alternatives. Why ".co.uk" instead of, say, ".ukcom" or ".couk"? Or ".Brit"? And, granted, that's a charge you can levy on the US gov't, 'cos they hogged the good names and forced everyone else into the two letter country codes. But still, blame the Brit gov't for being dumb enough to subdivide the ".uk": they could have reserved ".gov.uk" and "edu.uk", etc. and let the rest just have ".uk" domains (as in "www.theregister.uk").

That said, the statement in the original article that the only way to get off the list is to go back to the bureaucrats is incorrect: you could sue the OFAC in US Federal Court.

This just strengthens the case...

A little harsh and not that well thought out

So, he just re-registers the web domain names, sticks a few tasteful ads on the site, and then tells the press, gets some free advertising this way.

Yeah, the USA does not like Cuba - I must admit I always thought that Cuba was a no go until a few years back, so successful was the US campaign, but from what I have learned Cuba is a very popular tourist destination for folks from the UK.

.com is US controlled it is that simple, the reason we register .com is that browsers often default to .com when you type just the domain name in the URL. Maybe, we just say that browsers have to offer user configuration of this feature, and they may already do so.

The co.us is Colorado's domain :). I think each state has one.

The domain names are just a convention, and the beauty is we don't have to even abide by them if we don't want to, the control is with the host, any country, group or individual is free to call an ip number by any name they wish to, it just requires the inclination.

When did the U.S. become China?

Sorry, I'm just wondering, considering all the pissing and moaning that went on about China deciding what its people could and could not look at on the web - and it appears that the U.S. government are doing exactly the same thing?

www.cuban-baseball.com

Let's get to the nitty gritty, this is what they wanted to hide, the other sites are just a smoke screen. They're just pissed off at the drubbing they generally get from Cuba at the olympics or did before it was dropped. Which other country has a world series that only allows teams from their own country? Do they still let some token Canadian teams take part or have these been excluded after they won a few times? Having a national sport based on the girls game rounders with a bigger bat so they have a better chance of hitting the ball is a bit wussish anyway.

@ Morely Dotes

Given the state of the (Democrat) primaries, I get the feeling the following quote may (unfortunately) be appropriate.

"Meet the new Boss. Same as the old Boss"

I'm just not sure that there are enough Americans, especially in the 'undecided' category prepared to vote for either;

1) A Woman.

or

2) A Black Guy (there, I've said it)

We live in hope however. I don't have a preference for either of the above, just that the last thing the world needs is another tired old warhorse at the helm of the US, and another 4-8 years of this insanity.

Maybe if they took him off the blocked persons list he might decide to go there on holiday. They could pick him up at the airport. Just seems a bit silly tipping him off that they're looking for him like that.

@ Malcolm Weir

Wtf are you wittering on about?

The concept of top level domains is well documented. It seems fairly obvious why the space was further segmented. Of course the thing has evolved a bit as people look for 'cool' names irrelevant of how they fit into the traditional name space.

The .com problem is also a fairly obvious evolution as a) Americans have problems with the term 'international' and b) they got there first (as the DNS was mainly an American invention).

From up north

I use to live just up north and I love what America is suppose to stand for not what it does stand for.

The gov't is suppose to be of the people, by the people, for the people.

Reality is that the gov't is of the rich, for the rich, fu?k the rest. Problem is it is not just in the US that this stuff happens. The gov't is setup by people in Ivory tower with Crystal walls indoctrinating the masses to believe they are looking out for your best interest.

Netsol front running

So netsol forces you to check when domains expire through it's site. When you check it does front running to grab the domain, and you're forced to buy from an American site that will censor Cuba references.

Another reason why ICANN needs to be taken out and made international. They haven't stopped front running by Netsol.

What a bunch of planks

Everyone is entitled to thier own political and moral views, but when an English company and the internet is affected by ridiculous US Govenrment "shady" policy like this it's time to take a stand............................... Everyone point in the general direction of the US and laugh.

@Nic, RE: World Series

I have had numerous discussions with American sports "fans" who know nothing of their chosen sports - including many who thought winning The World Series made them an international success, much like any team who wins The Champions League over this side of the pond.

In fact, it often seems that more Brits know of this fact than the damn colonials, to the stage where making reference to the competition is used purely to extract the urea solution...

Cut the cables to America

Seriously, if they going to behave like a bunch of arses, let's set up our own root servers and let the US sulk on their own internet.

Unfortunately, since that would affect profit margins for US corporations, it would probably be considered an act of war. And given that I'm English and in England posting on a website with a .co.uk domain, I'm probably well within US jurisdiction.

I don't mind you guys coming over as students/tourists, but would you mind taking back the occupying army - the Russians aren't coming.

@Daffy the Duck

>the sport that girls play in the US is...football

That's also true in the UK, mainly played by namby pamby sissy southerners who kiss each other when a goal is scored. Real men play rugby and don't kiss each other unless they play for one of the public school teams in which case kissing would be the least of your worries.

@Not That Andrew

Cuban holidays

Looks like the US Government should ban Lastminute.com as well as I just thought "hmm I wonder if I could get a holiday in Cuba" and the only references to Cuba on Lastminute.com are some Hotels and Restaurants in the USA with the name Cuba or Cuban in !!!!

Ah, the Maria Isabel Sheraton affair, now on the net

About 2 or 3 years ago, a pair of Cuban citizens were kicked off without warning from the Maria Isabel Sheraton Hotel in Mexico City. Reason? An OFAC call, the funny thing was that:

1) The Hotel is in Mexico City, well outside the US borders,

2) they weren't giving Cuba any money, but quite the opposite.

While our stupid right-wing federal gov't is basically a US ass-kisser, the local government isn't, so they did take action and shut down that hotel for a few weeks. Too bad the mostly-neutral international policy has been abandoned, as the pre-2000 policy would have Sheraton incur in serious charges for sovereignity violation issues. Oh well...

@ who owns the internet

Actually if you do a little research, or are old enough, you would know that the US does in fact own what is now called the internet. They/we allowed it to connect to other countries who thought the idea was "cool" and built out their own little version of it to connect to the original. Now everyone gets all pissy thinking they actually have anything to say in how this now retired military network should be run. Bugger off the lot of you. If you don't like it feel free to sever your links to it, or better yet, try it for a day, just filter out ALL US based ip addresses, routes, and links and see how much of the internet continues to work for you. I can probably live a day or two without the reg, can you live for that long with a non-functional network?? Helldesk operators feel free to chime in....

Glad to be of service

To everyone who regularly uses El Reg to remind us that "yanks suck", "America's to blame for everything" and the ever-popular "why don't we just ignore them and do it for ourselves?"

I know it's redundant but I'd like to say - again - that there is a difference between the beliefs, intentions and worldview of most Americans and that of the US government in its present incarnation. (I suppose I should also point out that 'yanks' - when said to an American - means someone born north of the Mason-Dixon line but that subtlety would probably be lost on the geniuses who commonly post here.)

Yes, yes, cultural imperialism, world hegemony the United States is the only country in the world or in history that has ever expanded its sphere of influence to protect its interests. Yes, guilty, yes, yes. Very sorry to be so successful at doing it, must do worse and be proud of doing so - just like our outdated and irrelevant British cousins.

And, please, by all means, do go ahead and build your own little internet. Given the recent history of technological innovation and implementation achieved in Europe I'm sure the rest of the world will flock to use it - sometime around 2786.

Talk about sword rattling

If Cuba were a player such as China and the ROC, Russia or the early Soviet Union and big enough to cause serious problems then we would be going out of our way to do business and conduct negotiations with them. The only reason for continuing to play hard ball is that Cuba is small enough to be considered militarily insignificant and causes problems for no one but itself. Talk about sword rattling. Just as with the latter Soviet Union, Libya, panama, the higher the horse the further the fall and the harder it is to climb back up. We should back up from time to time and check our selves, before other's [place] us in check.

cuban holidays

Here in Scotland, holidays to Cuba are popular, book them from any travel agent, the reason Scots like to go to Cuba,---no Americans, no drugs, no perverts, your kids are safe, and you can buy a box of cigars---very good investment!

Who owns .com?

Not to rain on everyone's parade but I'll quote RFC920 (which defined DNS, from 1984):

BEGIN QUOTE

"Top Level Domain Requirements

There are very few top level domains, each of these may have many

second level domains.

An initial set of top level names has been identified. Each of these

has an administrator and an agent.

The top level domains:

ARPA = The ARPA-Internet *** TEMPORARY ***

Administrator: DARPA

Agent: The Network Information Center

Mailbox: HOSTMASTER@SRI-NIC.ARPA

[GOV and EDU...]

COM = Commercial

Administrator: DARPA

Agent: The Network Information Center

Mailbox: HOSTMASTER@SRI-NIC.ARPA

MIL = Military

Administrator: DDN-PMO

Agent: The Network Information Center

Mailbox: HOSTMASTER@SRI-NIC.ARPA

[ORG...]

Countries

The English two letter code (alpha-2) identifying a country

according the the ISO Standard for "Codes for the

Representation of Names of Countries" [5].

As yet no country domains have been established. As they are

established information about the administrators and agents

will be made public, and will be listed in subsequent editions

of this memo.

[Multiorganizations (never implemented)...]

Note: The NIC is listed as the agent and registrar for all the

currently allowed top level domains. If there are other entities

that would be more appropriate agents and registrars for some or

all of these domains then it would be desirable to reassign the

responsibility."

END QUOTE

So, since the administrator for .com is listed as DARPA and the agent is listed as the NIC, that would imply the US owning the domain. Of course DARPA and the NIC were replaced through acts of the US Government by IANA, ICANN, and Verisign. Also, Verisign being a US company, must by law abide by the Cuban Embargo.

If you don't like using a US-owned domain, use a country code domain other than .us.

If you don't like US control of the internet, invent your own. I'm sorry if I seem like I'm just another arrogant American, usually I'm not but in this instance, when you decide to use an originally US-based system that's what happens.

And someone already mentioned that .co.us is Colorado. (See RFC1480 for details.)

To All the Above

[quote from wikipedia] Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA (born June 8, 1955) is an English developer who invented the World Wide Web in March 1989. With the help of Robert Cailliau, and a young student staff at CERN, he implemented his invention in 1990, with the first successful communication between a client and server via the Internet on December 25, 1990. He is also the director of the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C (which oversees its continued development), and a senior researcher and holder of the 3Com Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).[1] [end of quote]

Must be a b1tch to admit that like almost all things US citizens claim to be their own, is in fact a BRITISH invention, made by a BRITISH citizen. Much like how certain US establishments will tell you Alexander Graham Bell was an American inventor. Just because something or someone is based in america doesn't make it/them american.

Bell was born in Scotland and moved to america. Einstein was Austrian not american. The WWW, while based mostly in america, is an English invention.

@ zed

ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet and it's original foundation traces it's roots back to the `50s.

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee invented what might be more aptly described as web browsing. The process of serving web pages from servers to clients. Which has nothing to do with the topic at hand, the ownership of domain names, but is just a service/process running on top of the Internet.

The Internet and DNS both predate his development by a significant period and are US creations.

Finally, the US is founded on immigration. Claiming discoveries because a person was born in your country and CHOOSE TO LEAVE is pretty shaky. AGB moved to the US five years before patenting the telephone. He had left GB (to Canada) a year before. He emigrated to this country, and choose to stay until his demise. So, discovered here, by someone who choose to move here and stay here. I'd say that makes it a US invention.